More 25th anniversary thoughts and recollections.

I had moved to Oxford less than two weeks before, still settling into my new life in the UK, working at Imperial College in London. That day, I was heading off to Durham, in the north of England, to a conference called “A New Era in Cosmology” — my first big talk now that I had started my permanent academic job. I was going to be a bit late, only able to arrive toward the end of the first day of the conference: September 11, 2001.

My train left in the late morning. A few hours in, passengers were starting to talk about an attack on New York City. This was in the days before smartphones and constant communication — I didn’t even have a mobile phone. The discussions around me were getting more and more frantic, and I was doing my best to piece together the story.

I was born in New York City, and much of my family still lived in the area. My parents lived in the suburb of Fort Lee, New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan; from the apartment where I grew up, we had a fantastic view from the 18th floor. My father worked in The City, commuting every morning by car from New Jersey to midtown Manhattan. He would have been at his office that day.

I considered getting off the train somewhere en route, perhaps Sheffield or York, to try to get some more information, but I just stayed on the train. I was able to get a taxi from the station in Durham to my hotel, listening to the news. I was able to call my partner, back in Oxford, who had, luckily considering the pressure on transatlantic calls, been able to get in touch with my family in New York and New Jersey. Everyone was, thankfully, alright, although at this point my father was still in Manhattan. He had noticed all the emergency vehicles speeding downtown, thinking that it was a motorcade for some foreign dignitary, but it was the first fleet of emergency responders heading towards the twin towers after the first collision. Eventually, he made it home, to my family’s apartment overlooking the Hudson. But it was so close to the George Washington Bridge, a piece of vital infrastructure thought to be in danger after the first attack, that he had to be let off a mile or so away and walk the rest.

As for me, I had to give the first talk on 12 September, about the “new era in cosmology” that coming CMB measurements would usher in. We started, understandably, with a few moments of silence, and I remember trying to come up with some appropriate words with which to start, something about needing to persevere even in the face of terrible events. I also recall that it was given on old-fashioned transparencies (I should try to dig it out of my files…) and that it was actually one of the better talks I had ever given, calmed, or at least slowed compared to my usual nervous agitation, by the events.

(My friend and colleague Peter Coles was also at the conference, offering his own reminiscences on his blog.)

As I mentioned in my last post, 9/11 feels like a milestone, and a millstone — the world hasn’t been the same since. And we still need to persevere in the face of terrible events.